On to part 6.
Back at the airport, Ken Ritz is a private pilot auctioning off a ride to a large crowd of desperate people. Consider what this says about Ritz. We know now what it is to have all air traffic shut down following 9-11. There were, indeed, a lot of stranded passengers desperate to get home. But the roads were working. The phone systems were working. Original casualties were overestimated by a factor of more than three because of mistaken reports of people in the World Trade Center or Pentagon, but unless you had family or friends working in (or visiting) either place, you could be confident they were safe. Left Behind raises that by a a factor of, well, many. Not only is all air traffic stopped, the highways are littered with wreckage. Instead of four planes crashing, there are more than anyone has counted. The phone lines have crashed under the sheer volume of calls. Every child has disappeared. No one knows which adults have or have not disappeared. Everyone is going crazy with anxiety over loved ones. And Ritz is exploiting the tragedy by auctioning off a ride to a frantic mob. So why does he come across as so likable?
Anyhow, while everyone else is bidding in the 4 to 5 thousand range, Buck offers $25,000, which no one else can approach. Ritz recognizes Chloe (he knows her father, remember), and she points out that Buck is "Mr. GNN himself." "Oh, yeah, you're the guy who does the news updates during football games." I like that detail. It reminds us that not everyone follows the news; lots of people think of it as just an annoying distraction from football games. Buck and Chloe say their farewells that faintly hint of romance to come.
Ritz takes Buck off to his private plane, talking about what caused the disappearances. He thinks it's aliens, which, he points out, is no crazier than what anyone else has proposed, "Alternative dimensions? Terrorist kidnappings? Nostradamus prophecies? Come on." These all seem like a reasonable response. So why haven't we heard about these theories from anyone else? Why isn't everyone asking exactly the same thing? Ritz says that someone on the radio suggested it was from the Bible, that two men could be standing in a field, one taken and one left standing, or two women in the kitchen, one taken, one left with the dishes.* He also comments that all children are gone. Buck tries to figure out what all the missing adults have in common. Ritz wonders if they are coming back, or if other people are going to disappear, too. And, if so, how do you hide from it. All very good question that you would expect most people to be asking. In fact, really, the fear of more disappearances should be leading to rampant paranoia. Buck, thinking, then says, "Maybe the common factor isn't in those who were taken. Maybe it's in those who were left behind."
I think this is supposed to sound profound, but actually it makes no sense at all, least of all from the perspective of the movie. The common factor, is, in fact, among those who were taken and not among those who were left behind. All adults who were taken were born again RTC's. All those left behind had only two things in common -- (1) they were all adults and (2) they were not oorn again RTC's. Unless the point is supposed to be that not being an RTC is a bigger common factor that being an RTC, this sentence is nothing but a red herring that never goes anywhere.
Back in Chicago, Chloe is in Raymie's school, sitting at his desk, looking at his things and crying. Her father shows up frantic looking for her. Chloe says she had to go looking for them, anywhere they could be. Rayford is starting to get an inkling that maybe Irene was right and suggests that they go to the church. Chloe either thinks he is making fun of Irene or doesn't want to face it; she walks off to be at home when they get back. Rayford looks at the pictures on the wall, saw that his son proudly drew a picture of his father in his pilot's uniform, and once again regrets all the times he neglected Raymie while he was still around.
Meanwhile, in New York, Buck goes to Dirk Burton's house to find it trashed and Dirk on the floor, dead. Buck briefly indulges his grief, then takes the secret disk out of Dirk's watch. Presumably the house was trashed as Cothran's men searched for any evidence of their scheme that Dirk might have taken home. They missed the secret disk in the watch. Buck goes into the study and starts looking to files. Nothing there. The computer beeps, so he looks and sees that Dirk has sent a message to Alan Tomkins. When Buck first met with his friend, he assured him that he or "Alan" would investigate if Dirk found anything. This is apparently the "Alan" that Buck was referring to.
What Buck doesn't realize is that in the street below, the same sinister figure who was watching him and Dirk meet in the abandoned warehouse is now training his rifle on Buck and following him throughout the room. He finds out when he goes to follow the e-mail Dirk send and the assassin turns the scope from Buck to the monitor. The monitor blows out. Buck dives to the floor. The assassin then shoots out a picture, a flower vase, and possibly other targets, not including Buck. (We hear several shots, but only see these three hit their targets. For the other shots, the camera is on Buck hiding on the floor). Then the assassin smiles. Apparently he was not supposed to kill Buck, just give him a good scare. Mission accomplished.
In Chicago, Rayford pulls up to the church and hesitates to go in. I am no connoisseur of churches, but Fred Clark assures us this one looks nothing like a typical RTC church. Typical RTC churches look like auditoriums. This one is clearly not a Catholic church. There are no niches with statues of saints, no Stations of the Cross, no stained glass windows with Biblical scenes, no crucifix. But their are pews. A vaulted, soaring ceiling. Stained glass windows with abstract designs. An alter and communion rail, with a bare cross behind them. These are apparently the marks of a mainline Protestant church -- Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, or something of the sort.
And in the church, there is one person. The rest of the congregation has disappeared. All alone and Left Behind is Bruce Barnes, the pastor we saw coming to Raymie's birthday, sitting in a carven seat in front, bouncing a ball, and saying, "Oh, God, what a fraud I am." The Slacktivist version cuts off before the rant really gets going, so I will cut off here to.
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*Matthew 24:36-41. "“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." This really does sound like a description of the Rapture. Yet the doctrine of the Rapture dates back no further than the 1830's. So how did Christians interpret this passage before then? Clark does not say, except to call it "a good description of the human condition throughout the entire history of this mortal race." I think this means he interprets it to mean you should always be ready to meet our Maker because we never know when you might die. You could be out working in the fields (if you are a man) or in the kitchen grinding grain (if you are a woman) and drop dead from a sudden heart attack.
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